This document relates to manipulating image content items (e.g., advertising images) to make them better visually merge with other content (e.g., text and/or graphics) presented to viewers in a display environment. Examples of display environments include electronic publications such as webpages accessible via a web browser application executing on a computer system that has connectivity with the Internet, on a point-of-sale kiosk, a dynamic billboard, a video stream, or, more generally, on any appropriate display in essentially any suitable context or environment.
Resource providers (e.g., publishers such as web site publishers) may include content such as content sponsoring in their respective publications to help financially support their operations. Some resource providers do not maintain a content sponsoring (e.g., advertising) infrastructure, and thus depend on third party content sponsor serving companies to recruit content sponsors and to serve content items to the resource providers' sites. Third party content sponsor serving companies can, depending on various factors, control which content items are displayed to which users and under what circumstances.